


Bakers Gonna Bake Bake Bake

by inkvows



Category: One Direction (Band), Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3260159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvows/pseuds/inkvows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karlie likes to bake. Taylor likes to bake. Harry used to be a baker, and bakers gotta bake, bake, bake it off. Add 1 part Kaylor to 1 part Larry, and stir until your heart is warm like a freshly baked batch of cookies right out of the oven. </p>
<p>Short, sweet, and mostly fluffy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bakers Gonna Bake Bake Bake

**Author's Note:**

> We were talking about Harry being a baker, and then I wondered if he ever brought up his past profession to Taylor (he totally did), and if she subsequently brought it up to Karlie. And then oops, I wrote a fic. Sorry, ma, it's all fictional.
> 
> I took some liberties with the timeline... and Karlie's cookie recipes.
> 
> Enjoy xx

It was unnecessarily early for Karlie to be up baking cookies, considering she’d just flown back from a shoot in Paris yesterday. The snow was nowhere near as bad as the weather reports promised, but in the event that all of New York ended up with an epic storm on their hands, she knew where she wanted to be snowed in, and that definitely wasn’t all alone in her cold and empty apartment.

The conversation had been short; in the car on the way back from the airport, Karlie had sent ‘welcome to New York’ with an airplane emoji, a blushing smiley face, and a few snowflakes for good measure. The response came only a few seconds later:

_Come over._

So that’s what Karlie did. She unloaded her bags from Paris, snapped a quick photo on the sidewalk for Instagram to announce her homecoming, and lugged her bags up the stairs. She didn’t unpack them, instead changing out of the clothes she’d worn on the plane into something more comfortable, stuffing a small tote with some slippers and her phone and the book she’d started on the plane. She didn’t need a lot; she already had everything where she was going.

And that was that. Twenty minutes later she was slipping through the back entrance of Taylor’s building, where she was greeted by her two favorite cats, and her favorite girl.

But Taylor was asleep now, her body clock clearly more adjusted after her vacation than Karlie’s. They had different routines sometimes, a side effect of all the traveling they both did, which was why Taylor invited Karlie to move in in the first place. It still wasn’t _official, official_ , what they had, but they weren’t hiding it either. Taylor’s team tended to say otherwise, and Karlie herself had been a little jumpy when she first felt the magnifying glass creeping closer and closer towards whatever this was that they had built, but Taylor was reassuring.

_It’s just a little different at this level,_ she had said. _There’s still room to figure it out, even with everyone watching. Don’t be scared._

So Karlie tried not to be scared, tried not to focus on this new fascination with their friendship, tried not to focus on Taylor being linked to Matt Healy or any of her other “exes.” She focused on work. She focused on their little clique of rad ladies. She focused on baking.

 

Which is how she ended up in a slightly understocked kitchen at 4am.

 

“Fuck,” Karlie mumbles, staring hopelessly into the open refrigerator. Last night, Taylor had promised to get more eggs when she woke up, having used the last of them before Karlie got back into the city. In her sleep-deprived, jet-lagged state, Karlie went into baking mode, completely forgetting the conversation from the night before and leaving her with a bowl of egg-ready batter. She shuts the fridge with a sigh, debating whether or not to scrounge around for something to substitute, or if she should just chuck the whole thing and bring a cup of tea back to bed, in the hope of falling asleep some time before the sun comes up.

Her internal dilemma is put on hold, however, by a sleepy Taylor Swift walking gracefully down the stairs.

“Are you still uh- _up?_ ” she yawns, covering her mouth and pulling out the scrunchie that she’d tied her hair back with to sleep. Little blonde strands always slip out and fall around her face, giving her the cutest bedhead of anyone Karlie has ever seen. Taylor is still so poised, even without the heels and the red lipstick, just barefoot and in the pajama set Karlie had given her for her birthday. She is a goddess in flannel shorts with pink piping.

“Jet lag,” Karlie says quietly.

Taylor nods in familiar understanding, pulling her hair neatly back into the scrunchie. Her eyes zero in on the bowl on the counter. “Oooh, what are you making?”

Karlie sighs again, slumping against one of the barstools. “Trying out a new recipe I thought of on the plane,” she says, nodding to her phone on the counter, a flour-y fingerprint smudging the black screen.

Taylor comes up next to Karlie, wrapping her arms around her neck as she peers into the bowl. “Yum, what’s in it? Is it the chocolate cinnamon kind you were telling me about?”

Karlie leans into Taylor’s embrace. “No, this one is vanilla nutmeg,” she says, and Taylor pulls back giving her a quizzical look.

“Um, that definitely smells like chocolate.”

Karlie grins, and Taylor pulls back completely, giving Karlie's shoulder a playful shove. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you!” she says, eyes wide and mouth gaping, but she’s laughing, and that makes Karlie laugh too, pulling Taylor back to her side with arms around her waist. They’re barely the same height with Karlie sitting down. Taylor still makes jokes about finally not being the tallest blonde she knows.

They giggle at each other for a moment, before Karlie says, “I was _going_ to make those chocolate cinnamon ones I was telling you about, but I forgot we were out of eggs.”

Taylor smacks a palm to her forehead. “Right, shit, I’m sorry. I forgot about your early morning baking habits. I promise I will never run out of eggs when you come over ever again. Like, from now on we will always have an ample supply of eggs in this apartment. Endless eggs. Eggs for days. All you can crack.”

She carries on for several minutes, and Karlie lets her, only rolling her eyes at the worst ones. She holds Taylor against her tightly, happy to be back home with her best friend and her corny sense of humor. She zones out, relaxing into the quiet gentleness of the kitchen, overhead lights dimmed just enough to see, Taylor warm and animated against her, smelling like cherry blossom shampoo and sleep and her latest fragrance (“Um, have you smelled it? I wouldn’t have made it if I wasn’t gonna wear it.”). Karlie doesn’t realize she’s started staring into the bowl of cookie batter until she feels Taylor playing with the thin gold chain around her neck.

"Did you hear me?"

“What?” Karlie blinks, turning back to look at Taylor.

“I said you have flour on your face.”

“I do?”

Taylor giggles, eyes crinkling and lips turning up at the corners. They’re pinker than normal, perpetually stained from that red lip classic thing Taylor is so fond of. “Yeah,” she smiles, reaching up to brush over Karlie’s eyebrow with her thumb. Her eyes suddenly light up, and Karlie knows that look- Taylor has just remembered something.

“Oh my god, did I tell you about that one time Harry and I tried to make profiteroles? I invited him over, it was like, one of the first and only times we hung out before we went public, like when we were still making arrangements, and we were stuck inside because there were paps and no one was supposed to know he was there...”

Taylor is so animated as she recounts the memory, but Karlie sours, shoulders slumping a little under Taylor’s arms. She hates talking about Taylor’s past relationships, the real ones and the PR stunts, but Taylor is so caught up in her story that she doesn’t immediately notice.

“And so we’d been talking for a while, mostly just small talk about work and nonsense about the weather, and he brought up how he used to work in a bakery, and I was like, no way, I love to bake! So somehow we ended up with THE most complicated recipe for profiteroles _ever_ , and it was a total mess by the time we’d finished, there was sugar everywhere, it took like two hours to clean up. I think we just ate the filling after all that, it was such a disaster.”

Taylor laughs again, and Karlie frowns. The hand that has been playing with Karlie’s necklace stills.

“Oh, come on, you know that whole thing was just for PR. He hadn’t done anything remotely like that before, he looked like he was gonna hurl every time we had to be seen together.”

Karlie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, secret baking sessions were totally part of the mutual promo deal.”

Karlie expects Taylor to go on the defense, snap at her for getting irritated over Taylor’s last lingering fake relationship _again_ , but her response is much softer, tucking Karlie’s blonde hair behind her ears before lacing her fingers behind Karlie’s neck.

“I was just trying to be nice,” she says sincerely. “He has a _boyfriend,_ Karlie. They’re inseparable.” She pauses, pursing her lips for a moment. “Actually, you know, I think they might even be engaged now.”

Karlie shakes her head, trying to shake off the little prickles of jealousy. Public perception equals record sales, equals promo deals, equals money. She knows this from her own experience- just being _friends_ with Taylor Swift has given her career a huge boost. _Red_ was a big success, _1989_ even bigger. A pop royalty PR stunt was exactly the kind of thing to keep the numbers growing, and Taylor is always interested in keeping the numbers growing. Karlie gets that; she just wishes she didn’t have to hear about it two years after the fact.

“I know,” Karlie says finally, finding Taylor’s blue-eyed gaze. “I’m sorry.”

Taylor gives her shoulders a squeeze. “It’s okay. Besides,” she says, shrugging, “he was just doing me and Dianna a favor.”

_That_ sets Karlie off. Her hands drop from around Taylor’s waist and she leans back on the stool. “Taylor!”

Taylor leans in and links their fingers. “I’m kidding!” she says, and she’s grinning, but she seems to sense Karlie’s distress. “I’m kidding,” she repeats seriously. “I won’t joke about that again. You’re it for me, you know? No one has ever come close to the way I love you.”

She squeezes Karlie’s fingers in between her own, and Karlie watches her face without speaking. She knows that face like she knows the lens of a camera, wide-eyed blinks like shutter clicks, capturing moments that might someday end up as lyrics to a song people will think were written about her. It’s like she intuitively knows what to do when she looks into a lens, intuitively knows what to do when she looks into that face.

Karlie pulls Taylor in for a kiss, brief and sweet and saying things that Karlie maybe can’t put into words right now.

Taylor’s eyes stay closed for a moment when Karlie pulls away, the look on her face one of utter bliss. Happiness. _Love._ When she opens her eyes again, she gives Karlie’s fingers yet another squeeze, nods her head toward the bowl of batter and says, “Why don’t you bake them anyway? See how they turn out without the eggs? We can try again tomorrow if they’re bad.”

Karlie agrees, so Taylor grabs a cookie sheet from the cupboard and turns on the oven while Karlie finishes mixing up the rest of the ingredients. She sits up on the counter and unlocks Karlie’s phone, pulling up an episode of SVU on YouTube to watch while the cookies are baking.

 

Forty minutes later, the eggless chocolate cinnamon cookies are cool enough to eat.

 

///

 

“Haz?” Louis calls from the from hall. He’s just arrived from dropping Eleanor off at her hotel. Harry’s started dinner early, Louis sneaking up on him in the kitchen and kissing him breathless before cackling maniacally and racing back out to the car to get the last of his bags.

Harry glances at the clock on the stove. If he puts the chicken in now he should have just enough time to start the potatoes. Perfect.

“Yeah, babe?” Harry calls back. He looks over his shoulder to see Louis holding a brown cardboard box, squinting down at the label on the top.

“D’you know you’ve got a package from a Ms. Karlie Kloss?” Louis says slowly, skeptically, turning the box around to show Harry. He’s already barefoot, probably kicked his shoes and socks off right inside the door for Harry to trip over later. Harry doesn’t mind though. He’s missed Louis’ smelly feet and smelly shoes strewn all over the place. He’s missed Louis. He _always_ misses Louis.

“Really?” he asks, and pulls a knife from the nearest drawer so they can open the box. Upon closer inspection, he sees that the box is covered in various stickers, all depicting cats. He snorts.

Louis, always impatient and always overprotective, takes the knife from Harry before he can even get close to the box, and slices through the tape along the openings. Inside is a clear plastic tub with a paper label attached.

 

_James Dean Daydream Cookies - Chocolate and Cinnamon, 100% Vegan._

 

Under all the bubble wrap there’s a notecard (with an illustration of a cat at the top, naturally). It reads:

 

_Dear Harry (and Louis, we presume),_

_Karlie’s latest creation. Thought of you when we made them. Congrats and happy new year!_

_-T & K_

 

Louis looks at Harry questioningly. It hasn’t been that long since he last saw Taylor, maybe a few weeks ago at Caleb’s birthday party. They don’t really talk much when they bump into each other around town, and she definitely hadn’t said anything about cookies. He shrugs, just as baffled as Louis.

That response must be as good as any, because Louis immediately pulls off the metal lid and sticks his nose in the container.

“Eh, they smell alright. I’ve never been opposed to eating my dessert first, have you, H?”

Harry rolls his eyes fondly. “You are ridiculous. Don’t spoil your appetite, I’m making chicken.”

Louis perks up, setting the cookies back down on the table. “Marmite or Parma ham?”

“Parma ham,” Harry says.

In a flash, Louis’ on top of him again, arms around his waist and lips kissing up the column of his throat to his mouth. Louis kisses his nose and Harry giggles, looping his arms around Louis’ neck. Louis’ eyes are hooded and his lips are pink, hands coming up to tangle in the curls around Harry’s face, and he’s looking at Harry like he wants to devour him. Harry is all too willing to let that happen.

“ _Or_ we can skip dinner _and_ dessert and head straight for a nightcap,” he says breathlessly.

Louis grins. “I like the way you think, Tomlinson.”

Harry goes a little hazy after that, letting Louis maneuver them over to the couch where he straddles Harry’s hips. He only resurfaces long enough to ask if they really are going to skip dinner or if they plan on eating the chicken, to which Louis responds with a fond, “Yes, of course, Harold,” before enthusiastically sucking a lovebite into Harry’s neck.

The cookies stay forgotten on the table.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've finished in ages, and it was so fun to write. Huge thank yous to Kathryn and Molly (on this fic specifically) and the crew (Hafsa, Carly, Rachel) for acting as the sounding board for all my ridiculous fic ideas that don't always come to fruition, and being tremendously supportive when they finally do.


End file.
